The moon never rises on the side of the chalet I am in. I know, however, whenever dusk is about to fall. A giant, electronic billboard atop a mall in Olongapo City lights up from across the sea and appears as a brilliant dot of light like a star that has fallen from heaven.

I note that no one else sees what I see. In that sense, I know that I am often alone. There are only myself and that dot of light and the sea between us now. I am shorn of everything, everything that everyone else thinks I am, like that Scooby-Doo teaser in which the characters strip off their masks under which are other masks under which are yet other masks...

Everything boils down to only two things. I am a writer and I am a painter.